Thought I would toy around with a list of Oscar-like opinions. Went
so far as to collect a list of some 180 movies of year 2000 vintage
(of which I've seen 30). The exercise mostly impressed on me how
little that I saw in the last year was strikingly good. Part of
this is no doubt me -- my patience for movies has certainly waned
over the last 3-4 years. Part may be that Wichita doesn't always
bring in the most interesting movies. (Although I can't say that
NJ was any better, and NJ was certainly more expensive and more
hassle.)

Anyhow, this is what little I have to report:

The best picture was O Brother Where Art Thou? --
kinder, gentler history recast as funkier myth. I was mesmerized
from beginning to end. Runner up: Almost Famous.

Leading actor: Ed Harris (Pollock) -- the drunken
explosions were not to my taste, but the frailty of his psyche,
and the release in his art, were superbly realized.

Leading actress: No compelling reason not to go with the consensus
choice, Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich).

The more technical awards are harder to assay. Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon is a remarkably handsome movie -- it's hard to
challenge it for anything from set design to cinematography. For
writing I naturally lean toward the top of the list: Cameron Crowe's
original Almost Famous, the adaptation of Nick
Hornby's High Fidelity (incidentally, the only movie
that I've read the book to since The Spy Who Came In From the
Cold), and of course O Brother Where Art Thou?
for most original reconstruction of ancient sources (Homer via
Preston Sturges).

I'm not inclined to give myself much credit for this list. For contrast,
I tracked down
J.
Hoberman's Top 10 list: only two movies there that I've even heard
of, only one that I've seen: The House of Mirth:

It's keeping me up nights: Have I surrendered to the Merchants of
Masterpiece Theater? Another unlikely literary adaptation,
this Terence Davies costumer treats Edith Wharton's bleak society
satire as material for a Mizoguchi geisha drama -- the tragic heroine
is tricked, abused, or betrayed by almost every character she meets.
Davies resists the idealizing soft-focus glamour or nostalgic,
ostentatious opulence of similar period pieces. This is no fetishized
lost world but one that is fiercely, uncomfortably present.

Not what I remember -- although the "geisha drama" line is shrewd,
the story line's potential for nostalgia is pretty miniscule, for
glamour little better. To me this played like the faded ghost of a
much better novel -- not least because the reader's imagination
can concoct a more intriguing heroine than Gillian Anderson can
project.

Movie: Chocolat. Contrary to expectation, the center of
this film is Alfred Molina: aristocrat, civil servant, the blind and
tragic victim of his own scrupulousness. Also contrary to expectation,
the active force is Lena Olin, whose escape from victimhood drives
Molina to breakdown. That this is accomplished through chocolate
(or more inscrutably through Juliette Binoche) matters little, but
seems to be the source of much confusion. The confusion is no doubt
facilitated by some fuzziness in the source -- the English-speaking
French, the checkered history of the church, the red pepper in the
chocolate. And one would have liked to tweak the script a bit -- to
make more of the Elvis-struck young priest, less of the Django-struck
river rat, which might have more clear that the subversive outsiders
are more occasion than cause, that the real moving force is the
yearning from within -- for freedom, for comfort, for good food.
A-

Got sidetracked today with picking over the Year End lists
for 2000 and
1999. Filled out the 2000
reissue list -- not real deep. Added Select Cuts from
Blood and Fire to the new albums list: not enough
info available on where these dub cuts come from, let
alone when/how many times they've been remixed. Went
back over the 1999 list, adding a few more recent finds
(Beck, Trailer Bride, Ali Farka Toure, Fiona Apple, Goodie
Mob, and a techno comp, Y2K: Beat the Clock),
and nudging Eminem and Le Tigre up a few slots.

But still, I only have 32 A-list records for 1999 (out of
118), vs. 43 (of 103) A-list records in 2000. I'm inclined
to doubt that some years are better than others, but the
different counts seem more than random variation. Was I
too harsh on 1999? The following were more/less the best
of the 1999 B+ records:

Blink 182: Enema of the State.

Joanne Brackeen: Pink Elephant Magic.

Cesaria Evora: Cafe Atlantico.

Tim Hagans: Animation Imagination.

John Jackson: Country Blues and Ditties.

George Jones: The Cold Hard Truth.

Arto Lindsay: Prize.

Taj Mahal / Toumani Diabate: Kulanjan.

Paul McCartney: Run Devil Run.

Mos Def: Black on Both Sides.

Dolly Parton: The Grass Is Blue.

Sleater-Kinney: The Hot Rock.

The only 1999 Unrateds with much of a chance to crack this list are:

The Dismemberment Plan: Emergency and I.

John Lewis: Evolution.

Q-Tip: Amplified.

The Real Hip-Hop: The Best of D&D Studios, Vol. 1.

OK, these are all pretty good records. George Jones and Dolly Parton
sound great, but aren't deep in content. Paul McCartney revisits the
bronze age of Beatles rock & roll covers -- always fun. John
Jackson is as comfy and low key as any Jimmy Rodgers devotee can
get. Arto Lindsay and Cesaria Evora sound a lot like Arto Lindsay
and Cesaria Evora. John Lewis is a gem in that most unprepossessing
of genres: mainstream jazz piano trios. Joanne Brackeen is more
roguish, less connected. Tim Hagans' fusion electronics impress as
sound but fall short on substance. Blink 182 sounds fine but empty.
Sleater-Kinney is more substantial, but still too shrill for my ears.
Taj Mahal slips in and out. Dismemberment Plan and Q-Tip are arguably
more interesting, but I lose consciousness of their sound so fast
I've never felt comfortable with rating them. (Played them both
today -- still no verdict.)

Maybe more time would swing 3-4 of these over the top, but that still
falls far short of 2000. The main difference is jazz, and the main
difference there is the saxophone. My top five 1999 jazz records are
all piano records (Melford, Valdes, Taylor, Brackeen, Lewis); my top
eight 2000 jazz records are all saxophone (Carter, Rollins, Carter
again, Ware, Redman, Murray, Harper, with Lovano and Sanchez in B+
territory). The best saxophone 1999 could muster may have been
Lovano's Friendly Fire and Murray's Seasons, but I
can easily rattle off five superior Lovanos, and fifteen or more
superior Murrays.

Movie: Pollock. Splendid. So few movies seem to
be able to take a real life and scope themselves to tell a
meaningful story without eviscerating or aggrandizing their
subject, but everything here feels right. Sure, we never
really know what eats at Pollock, but we feel an awkward
fragility that stops us colder than the occasional drunken
outburst. Still, his art seems distinct from his demons,
not stereotypically entwined. And it is the art that triumphs,
most importantly by vivifying the process, and thereby the drama,
of its creation. A

Back from my splurge in Oklahoma City -- a quick tour of used
record shops, which netted 44 CDs. Finds included old country
(Charlie Poole, Vernon Dalhart, Milton Brown), old-ish folk
(New Lost City Ramblers, Doc Watson), old blues (Tommy McClennan,
several Yazoo comps), vintage ska (both Intensified!
comps), some Africana (Francis Bebey, Youssou N'Dour), and
a couple of A-rated greatest hits comps that I'd never found
used before (Joan Jett, Sinead O'Connor).

Finally replaced the big MAG DJ920 monitor which had always been
fuzzy with a smaller but much sharper Hitachi CM771. Tremendous
improvement, half the price.

I think it's his best album ever: while Redman's much hyped early
efforts were tours de force, showcasing his erudition, learning,
and upbringing, and his later records were never less than enjoyable,
with Beyond he seems to have finally honed his own sound:
the lightness he so admires in Lester Young dancing above a firm
foundation of John Coltrane.

This brings the listed saxophone albums to seven: James Carter (twice),
Sonny Rollins, David S. Ware, David Murray, Billy Harper, and Redman.
The most conspicuous omission is Joe Lovano's 52nd Street Themes,
a Todd Dameron tribute which is longer on orchestration than on Lovano's
always admirable horn. I rate it a solid B+.

Redman and Lovano have new albums. I haven't gotten to Lovano's yet,
but the trio format should force him to blow -- but the several groups
make it unlikely that one sideman will steal the show, as Elvin Jones
did in the first Trio Fascination. I have played Redman's
Passage of Time twice: not as gripping as Beyond, but
full of interest.

Movie: The House of Mirth. How awful it must be, to be
rich and even a wee bit conscious, especially if one isn't very, very
rich. There may be a good book in here, but Gillian Anderson never
evinces the charm or wit that Lilly Bart must've been capable of in
order to garner her resolute following -- she merely bores them into
pathetic helplessness. B

These come from a cookbook that Kathy brought me, Terrific Pacific
Cookbook, by the authors of my favorite Russian cookbook, Please
to the Table. But where the Russian cookbook was solidly of a place
-- even though I tended to pick around the edges, especially Armenia
and Estonia -- this newer book is geographically flimsy. Only one of
the four dishes above seems to be rooted in Asia proper: the others
feel more like some Australian equivalent of California fusion.

Movie: Gladiator. Suspiciously modern, so much so that it
congratulates itself on the marvelousness of its plot. The war scenes
are surprisingly brutal, not so much in their expected gore as in
their deliberation. The games, however, are way beyond the pale: too
much, too fast. For the historically inclined, closer to the mark on
Commodus than Marcus Aurelius (the Dick Nixon of the Roman Empire:
corrupt, pontificating, someone who extended pointless wars for fear
of historians judging him the Empire's debacle). B+

We are very sad, without cat tonight. Edna, age 20 or 21, was put to
sleep this afternoon, after several weeks of increasing debilitation.
She lost weight, especially strength in her hind legs, which left her
walking crooked, squatting with one leg splayed out. She's been
agitated, restless for days. Her diet pretty much reduced to chicken
soup -- she even turned down tuna water. Last time we recall her
eating solid food was trout from my Chinese dinner.

We have a vet which comes to the house. This spares us the scientific
precision of the most expensive animal hospitals, so it is impossible
to know exactly what happened. Laura suspects renal failure. In any
case, I recall that my Aunt Edith, plagued with periodic dizzy spells
and tremors, was told by her doctors that she was just fine for an
89-year-old woman. Edna was all that and then some. Like Aunt Edith,
she is now gone forever.